Hand-held computers are used for a variety of purposes. For example, a hand-held computer may be used to determine and display a voltage in a similar manner to a volt meter, or it may be used to execute computer software. An example of a hand-held computer is a SYMBOL.RTM. Series 3000 personal data terminal. Many hand-held computers, as well as less portable computers, such as desktop personal computers, utilize a character based display. In a character based display, the display often includes a number of cells for displaying a representation of a character. Each cell is used to display a representation of a single character, such as an alphanumeric character. Such a cell may include a plurality of pixels which may be arranged in a plurality of columns and rows. However, most character based displays cannot display representations of arbitrary lines or curves.
Computing systems utilizing character based displays, such as hand-held computers, provide limited display capability. For example, in one implementation, it has been determined that representations of characters on a character based display can take on only one size concurrently. Such a limitation can be detrimental. For example, the user of a hand-held computer may wish to display a voltage associated with an electric voltage being measured in a larger size than associated data in other parts of the screen. Without the ability to display text concurrently in more than one size, either data that would otherwise be displayed must be omitted to allow display space for larger size representation of characters, or characters must sometimes be displayed in a size that is less than optimal for particular applications.